


dead weight

by Lleu



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unrequited Crush, masturbation reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-26 16:54:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14406411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lleu/pseuds/Lleu
Summary: “we get into a fight, you canbuildour way out of it, eh, Ray?” // “it’s Raleigh.” // “whatever.”





	dead weight

**Author's Note:**

> this started from what should, tbh, have been a cute headcanon (the bit about daydreaming), but somewhere along the line it got merged with my extremely bitter Chuck meta, so. haha. thanks @Bdoing for being my test reader. I've been trying to write this for _minimum_ three years, but I think more like four. now it’s finally done.

they’ve met once before, although neither of them acknowledges it after Raleigh’s return to the PPDC.

*

it’s in Manila, while his dad and Scott are stationed there. Chuck has a little room — more large closet than room, all told — adjacent to his father and uncle’s rooms. he even has his own corridor access door (although, of course, he isn’t allowed to go down any corridors where there might be something actually _interesting_ ). even if it has a door from his father’s room, too, it’s still a step up, privacy-wise, from what he’s used to. it even has locks, on _both_ doors, something he’s taking full advantage of in order to jack off every chance he gets; after all, who knows when they’ll get reassigned somewhere else where he’ll get stuck with the top bunk over his father’s bed again?

Shatterdomes aren’t optimized for people with kids, shockingly. teenagers especially.

after about a month, he starts to relax and get into a routine — as much as possible, anyway, given the frequent preparedness drills and other miscellaneous interruptions. there’s school, there’s homework, there’s a few hours spent on the internet, there’s his gym time, and there’s sleep, not all necessarily in that order, and occasionally (very occasionally) with other things thrown in.

he’s never been very good at making friends, and what with having arrived in the middle of the schoolyear he isn’t really expecting to make any inroads at the international school he’s bussed off to every morning. he has a few friends, still, from past schools — mostly from before they left Australia — but they aren’t exactly close. most of his social life is a combination of strangers or near-strangers on tumblr and J-techs and other Shatterdome personnel humoring him in the cafeteria.

he sees the other pilots, too, sometimes, but only ever at a distance. they’re all too busy to pay attention to him, anyway, just a stupid teenager ( _with a dream_ , he doesn’t add; he doesn’t have to — it goes without saying). the Hansen kid. _brat_ , he suspects they think of him as; that’s how he would see himself, anyway. close enough that they’ll acknowledge his presence if they pass in the halls, close enough that he can admire (drool over) some of the younger pilots, but always with a wall between them. in the Shatterdome, the saying goes, there are two kinds of people: Rangers, and everyone else. when it comes down to it, during an attack, the Rangers are all that matters.

he’ll be one of them someday. for the time being, that knowledge, that certainty at the core of his being, is enough. it has to be: he certainly isn’t getting anything from anyone else, least of all his father. all he has to go on is himself.

then the Beckets show up. _Raleigh_ fucking Becket shows up, hot and high on heroism — which of course only makes him even hotter, the confidence (cockiness) in his every move. Chuck is more than a little star-struck, not to mention more than a little bit a horny teenager. he spends a lot of time staring at Raleigh (gazing at him) from afar, across the cafeteria. he trips over his own feet once in the hall when Raleigh walks by; fortunately, he’s deep in conversation with Yancy — he thinks of them both by their first names, even though they’ve never been formally introduced — and Mr. Choi, so he doesn’t notice. a passing J-tech does, to Chuck’s chagrin, but she looks away discreetly as he collects himself.

it’s stupid — not stupid to want to, but stupid to actually let himself do it — but he starts to daydream about Raleigh. he’s jacked off plenty of times imagining the things he wants Raleigh to do to him, but this is different: this is honest to god cutesy, domestic garbage. cuddling in Chuck’s cramped bed. holding hands. he’ll have a stupid nickname for Raleigh — “Ray”, maybe. it’s too bad “Chuck” is _already_ a nickname.

he finds his attention drifting in class, even in the science and math classes he knows he’ll need to be a Ranger, to visions of lounging on the beach with Raleigh (with Ray).

_“you look good, Chuck,” Ray says, smiling that perfect, cocky smile. in his daydreams he doesn’t get flustered or anxious: he’s as confident as Ray._

_“so do you,” he answers, even though it’s obvious, goes without saying. they’re a good match. in this daydream, they’re equals, partners. lovers. they’re heroes. they’re Rangers._

of course, daydream tends to veer pretty quickly into extremely distracting fantasy, but that’s par for the course.

then one day, to his horror, Raleigh — _not_ Ray, he has to remind himself — sits down across the table from him in the cafeteria, invited over by one of the J-techs Chuck’s sitting with.

“hey,” Raleigh says. “you’re the Hansen kid, right? I’ve seen you around.”

Chuck feels like his face is on fire, and it doesn’t occur to him that he needs to react until slightly too long has passed for it not to be awkward. finally the J-tech next to him bumps his knee against Chuck’s, and he says: “yeah. I’m — Chuck.”

“nice to meet you, Chuck,” Raleigh says. he doesn’t bother introducing himself; everyone here already knows him — it would be pointless. “you aiming to be a pilot?“

“yeah,” Chuck says. “working on my application now.”

Raleigh looks him over for a moment, then nods and says, “you’ll be a shoe-in, especially with your family background.”

Chuck exhales, realizing as he does so that he was holding his breath. “I hope so,” he says. “can’t imagine doing anything else.”

“I know the feeling,” Raleigh says; he grins, and Chuck can practically feel his soul leaving his body.

Raleigh starts eating, then; Chuck is frozen — he knows he should say something, but his mind is blank. one of the techs starts chatting about…something to do with Jaeger engines. Chuck isn’t really processing it; he’s too busy staring at Raleigh. he is, somehow, beautiful even while he’s eating. it helps that he keeps his mouth closed while he chews.

“lost your appetite, Chuck?” Raleigh asks suddenly, during a lull in his conversation with the tech, nodding at Chuck’s still three-quarters full plate.

“what?” Chuck says. he could punch himself. is that the best he can do? he looks down at his plate, which he’d forgotten was there. “oh.”

“I think he’s just a little star-struck,” the tech says, smirking. Chuck’s face burns again; part of him wants to sink into the floor.

“can you blame him?” Raleigh says, striking a mock-heroic pose and then laughing at himself. “relax, kid; I’m as human as you are. anyway, give it a few years and you’ll be a star, yourself. Chuck Hansen, Ranger.”

Chuck is torn between wishing he could just disappear — he knows his face must be bright red — and feeling like he’s about to ascend to a higher plane of existence. fortunately — or not — Raleigh saves him the trouble of deciding which to do by taking one last bite of his mashed potatoes and abruptly standing up.

“well, gentlemen,” he says, “I’ll see you around — duty calls.” he nods towards the door; Chuck looks and sees Yancy standing there, arms crossed.

“see you, Becket,” the tech says, nudging Chuck again.

“s-see you,” Chuck says, tripping over the words. Raleigh grins at him and Chuck’s heart skips a beat; then he’s gone.

“so…” the tech says, innuendo unmistakable in his voice.

“shut up,” Chuck says, a little more forcefully than he means to. he gets up without finishing his food and heads back to his room. the door closes behind him, and he leans on it and lets his head fall back against it. he closes his eyes. “ _fuck_.”

the next day, the Beckets are transferred to Alaska. not long after, Herc manages to get them posted back home in Sydney. Chuck’s busy, what with changing schools, not to mention his Ranger application and the training that goes with it, but never too busy to watch every single interview with the Beckets that he can find on the internet. Herc is moving up in the ranks, and he tells Chuck they’ll be staying put for a while, so he takes advantage of the opportunity to hang up his poster of the Beckets on the wall of his room. the last thing he sees when he’s falling asleep after his nightly workout routine. the first thing he sees when he opens his eyes in the morning.

then comes Knifehead.

pilots die; Chuck knows that well enough. what he can’t accept is the way Raleigh abandons the Jaeger program — everything Chuck has been raised to believe is right. he feels betrayed. part of him knows it’s irrational, but he feels it anyway. the idea that Raleigh Becket can just turn his back on the world — on Chuck.

that will never be him. he pushes himself. maybe too hard, sometimes. his father tries to talk to him about it at one point, but he brushes it off. anyone who holds him back is _dead weight_. anyone who can’t see the right way is _dead weight_ (the right way, of course, is Chuck’s way, the Jaeger program way, which is the same as Chuck’s way, always).

drive turns to arrogance (a direct quote from one of his co-cadets). Jaeger pilots are dying left and right and the part of him — and there _is_ a part, however deep he tries to bury it — that understands Raleigh’s decision cries out in pain, but the rest of him looks around and sees _dead weight_ everywhere.

the night he graduates from the training program, he burns his poster of the Beckets.

with his uncle out of the picture, he gets paired with his father, and their disagreements outside the cockpit notwithstanding, they’re _good_ at what they do. the more kaiju he takes down, the more _dead weight_ he sheds. he may have alienated everyone else around him, but when it matters most, in a fight, in the drift, he’s unstoppable. the perfect Ranger.

when he looks into the camera in Sydney and says “it’s a new record”, part of him is still, five years later, talking to Raleigh Becket. (watching the announcement on the television at the construction facility in Sitka, Raleigh takes a long look at Chuck, trying to reconcile that awkward, blushing teenager with the arrogance on that television screen.)

then Raleigh’s _there_ , in the Shatterdome. Herc goes over to say hello, gestures back towards Chuck; Raleigh takes a long look at him across the room, and Chuck death-glares right back at him, daring him to bring it up.

(part of Chuck is thinking, as Raleigh sits down, still, after all these years, _okay, Chuck, just be cool, you’re a pilot now, too_ , and he hates that Raleigh still has that kind of power over him.)

(another (small) part of him is hoping desperately that Raleigh won’t give the answers Chuck knows he’s going to, won’t disappoint him, won’t finally articulate betrayal in his own words.)

then he says it, and that last hope dies. _construction_. the deadest of _dead weight_ , that god-damned coastal wall.

“we get into a fight, you can _build_ our way out of it, eh, Ray?” the old daydream nickname slips out before he realizes it. he has to stop himself from wincing visibly.

“it’s Raleigh.”

“whatever.”

the fact of Raleigh’s continued existence is betrayal, that he can just stroll right back into this life. and, adding insult to injury, suddenly Raleigh’s all wrapped up in Mako, and even if they’re not actually fucking, it’s the last straw for the part of Chuck that used to be a little bit in love with _Raleigh Becket_.

everything Raleigh does is like a punch in the gut because he’s still himself. he’s lost some of the cockiness, and he’s nowhere near the top of the world, but he still has that smile, and he’s still an honorable man, and everything Chuck isn’t and — never could be.

it hurts. seeing Raleigh reminds him of what he wanted, once. then he looks at himself and sees what he isn’t. hates what he’s become.

but it’s too late to turn back. it’s been too late for a long time.


End file.
